


freefall

by novagrey



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Aerith Gainsborough Lives, Clerifa, Eventual Smut, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Polyamory, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29395404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novagrey/pseuds/novagrey
Summary: sephiroth has been defeated. shinra is gone. the plates of midgar have been dismantled and relocated to form a ring around the slums, which now are the heart of the city, finally fully open to the sky. the ghostly reminder of the past remains in the empty tower that once was shinra headquarters.even with shinra gone, there will always be someone new threatening the lifestream, and avalanche is stronger than ever. so why is it that cloud feels so uncertain about the future?
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife





	freefall

he was positive he would never get used to the sky feeling this open.

even during his days as a shinra grunt, most of them had been spent on some dull job in the slums. glimpses of the sky were reserved for trips to headquarters. now hq was just a dark tower looming twice as high as it had appeared before. it wasn't any taller though. it's just that with the plates no longer in the way, you could see all the way from the central support to the top of the shinra building from the actual ground.

the plates that remained after the collapse of sector seven had been relocated, part of a massive undertaking to reconstruct midgar without a reliance on shinra energy. now, the plates and everything that had been on them sat in a circle around the slums, creating almost a gear-like shape, with each plate directly adjacent to its corresponding slums. the outer circle had started to fill out more recently but the slums were now the heart of midgar and it was an odd but comforting feeling.

but those stars came out and every time cloud felt like if he didn't hold onto something he was going to somehow fall right into space. and that's what he found himself thinking as he hiked back into the sector seven slums.

crushed as they had been, much of the rubble had been cleared in the past year. some buildings had managed to escape much damage. some had fallen into shinra's lab below. most were somewhere in between, completely crushed, entire buildings from above collapsed on top. but many people had been determined to remake this their home. and tifa was no exception. in the midst of all the debris, crumbling architecture all around, seventh heaven had returned.

the bar wasn't exactly as it had been before, nowhere near. the brick facade looked like it had survived a war, and in some ways, cloud supposed it had. this building had fallen from above and managed to land completely upright, half sunken into the ground. the bar and their apartments took up the upper floors, a makeshift porch and door installed after it had settled. the lower floors were mostly impassable, and clearing them out would probably make the structure unstable. so this was it, their home looking like it had grown out of the ground almost when really it was the other way round.

wood and sheet metal groaned beneath his feet as he climbed the stairs to the entrance. pushing his way inside, the blonde man let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

"long day?" asked tifa from where she was parked at the counter, wiping a damp glass with a cloth.

"just not used to seeing the stars still," he replied, approaching the bar. the seat immediately in front of her was taken so he found one at the end instead and she met him there.

"it is kind of strange, isn't it?" she smiled softly, gazing past him and out the windows. the tall wreckage around them meant they couldn't see it from here, but he could tell she was picturing it. "reminds me of home."

he knew she meant nibelheim, even though she considered midgar her home now.

"what can i get you?" her gloved hand gently brushed against his on the counter and he turned his head, looking away and pulling his hands into his lap.

"whatever. i'm not picky."

tifa squinted her eyes a little at that. "you _are_ picky, you'd just rather not be an inconvenience."

his brow furrowed but he couldn't help a light flush.

"but I'll play along," she finished, setting about making him a drink. "i hope you didn't make any other plans for tonight," tifa added, her eyes sparkling.

cloud raised an eyebrow at that. "what's that supposed to mean?"

"did you forget? cloud!"

"forget what?" as she passed him a drink, an embarrassed look of realization dawned on his face. "fuck. i didn't make other plans!" he countered, as though that made up for his forgetfulness.

"fine, i won't tell aerith," tifa teased, and cloud let out a sigh of relief.

"thanks." he'd forgotten he and tifa had agreed to visit her garden late tonight, after the bar closed, to help pick rare flowers that only bloomed after dark.

it was still fairly early so cloud took his drink to the corner to settle in for a game of darts. he nearly choked on the first sip. when tifa wanted to, her drinks were almost too hard even for him. then again, cloud didn't have much drinking experience these days. as the night passed, he nursed his drink and she kept it topped up. other customers came and went, and finally the bar was empty.

"ready to go?" tifa asked as she bounced over to him.

"yeah." lightly buzzed and now more awake than he had been, cloud holstered his sword on his back and the two of them headed out.

the mercenary kept his eyes firmly on the ground as they walked, knowing if he looked up now he might fall over. not into space maybe, but into the dirt surely. once again he felt tifa's hand brush against his and this time he tentatively took it in his, letting it ground him.

"wow, you really find it unsettling, huh?" she asked, noticing his determination to avoid seeing the sky.

"unsettling is the wrong word." his answer was firm and truthful. unsettling was what he'd always described the plates above as before they'd been brought down. "just... jarring. and..." he faltered before continuing. "it reminds me of the crater."

"well, we'll make new memories," the fighter insisted, her voice full of vigor.

wreckage turned to a more familiar desolace as they traveled. no one was usually out this late, and it was dark without the bright lights of shinra's lamps above. before they knew it, dirt turned to grass and aerith was calling for them from a far corner of her garden.

"over here!" she was barely lit by a few lanterns placed strategically to dimly light the whole garden. it was overflowing with flowers these days, the lifestream restored and sun during the day finally letting flowers grow more freely.

the pair made their way to the slim brunette, careful to nudge flowers out of the way with their boots.

"aerith!" tifa grinned. "i should have come out here sooner, there's so many flowers!"

"that's exactly the problem!" aerith exasperated with a laugh, emerald eyes twinkling in the orange lantern light. "there's so many flowers i can't find the ones i need for this order! i'm so glad you both came!"

"of course," cloud said with a nod, looking down at the flowers surrounding them all. "but, what are we looking for exactly?"

"these!" in one slender hand aerith held up a delicate flower. its petals were vaguely lily-shaped, but it gave off a soft blue glow. "they only glow at night, during the day they look like so many of the other flowers around here!" she stooped over and handed them each a basket. "now spread out and get to it!"

the girls got started in a fit of giggles and cloud couldn't help but let out somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. he crossed to another side of the garden and squatted down, carefully waving through a bunch of flowers. he found two of the glowing ones and carefully cut them with the stem-cutter found in his basket.

after half an hour he felt like his eyes were having trouble focusing just from how dark it was and how faint the glow was. the warm lantern light didn't help either, making it harder to spot the cool-toned petals. he was starting to wonder if he was color-blind. with a grunt he stood up and made his way to aerith. tifa had just finished as well it seemed as she met them in the middle of the garden.

"well? how did it go?" aerith chirped.

tifa's basket was just shy of full. cloud glanced down at his own and saw it wasn't quite half.

"totally useless!" the girl in pink teased at his results.

"hey!" cloud protested. "blame the drink tifa made me!"

"oh hush, you're totally sober!" tifa shot back.

"okay, maybe mostly," he admitted. at that, they had a rare moment where all three of them actually laughed, cloud included.

"i'm pooped!" aerith proclaimed, falling back into the grass and staring up at the sky. tifa promptly joined her, dragging cloud down with the two of them.

it was early summer and the smell of fresh grass and recent rain filled the air. here, it even overpowered the smell of the city. fireflies flickered in and out of existence and against the backdrop of the stars cloud couldn't tell which ones were insects and which were shooting stars. his head felt dizzy a little again and he wasn't sure if it was from the drink or the sight - probably the latter.

"so weird, seeing the stars here." aerith hadn't been privy to the earlier conversation but they all seemed to be on the same page.

"mhmm," cloud agreed.

"just like our promise," tifa said quietly.

immediately, cloud leaned up on one elbow to peer down at her. his glowing eyes held no particular expression that tifa could read. "what was that?" he asked.

"nothing."

he studied her face, frozen, every muscle suddenly tense. without the world ending around them, here in the garden, her words struck deep.

his movement was sudden, but soft as he finally made a move no one was ever sure he would, leaning down and gently brushing his lips against tifa's.

tifa gasped, kissing him back ever so softly just once before cloud had returned to his position on his back in the grass.

his face was flushed as he remembered aerith right beside them. aerith, whom he also had intense feelings for. he'd had a lapse in judgement, and everything in his body was screaming at him to leave, but he felt like that would just make it worse.

after a moment of awkward silence, he let out a small breath. "sorry," he said.

but just like that, he was stunned back into silence as aerith leaned over him and kissed tifa too, fully on the mouth. she and tifa peppered each other in small kisses. then aerith sat back and with a gentle smile said, "he kept his promise, tifa. we all did. we all saved each other. and the planet."

tifa nodded, her cheeks flushed, fingers tracing over her lips as tears came to her eyes. "we did."

"hey. you okay?" cloud asked, sitting back up and searching her face for answers to whether she was okay with whatever had just happened between the three of them.

she nodded, and it seemed genuine as the corners of her lips turned up ever so faintly.

aerith stood, gesturing to the house that had once been elmyra's before elmyra had left for kalm. "it's late, why don't we go inside?"

**Author's Note:**

> i'll add a drawing here of what midgar looks like tomorrow, i'm just in bed writing this right now so i can't lol. edit: here's the layout. left drawing obviously not to scale, the plate is not that high above the slums, it was just to try and make it clear. this is probably the worst art i've ever made in my life lmao https://i.imgur.com/pQv5EfE.png
> 
> i can't decide if this will have explicit sexual content or if it will be fade to black, we'll see, i'll change the rating if i need to then.
> 
> this takes place in a hypothetical post FF7R where the events of Crisis Core & FF7 are pretty much all still the same except thanks to aerith's precognition in this timeline or whatever she lives & they defeat seph (and either he didn't summon meteor or they dealt with it somehow idk)


End file.
